PIERRE BOURDIEU’S PRAXEOLOGICAL THOUGHT: MEDIATIONS AND CONTRIBUTIONS TO RESEARCH IN THE FIELD OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article analyzes the contributions of Pierre Bourdieu’s praxiological thought to higher education research. It conceives of higher education as a multifaceted social space whose dynamics are shaped by the struggles, strategies, and interests of different actors and institutions. The text reflects on the contributions of the notion of "field" as a theoretical and methodological proposition for higher education research, alongside the concepts of habitus and practical sense. Methodologically, the text reviews the author’s works to understand the structural elements of praxiology and other works focusing on the complexity and challenges of higher education in contemporary society. The article concludes that higher education, with its defining characteristics of institutional diversity and heterogeneity, constitutes a field with structured spaces of positions. Within these spaces, specific objects of dispute and preferences mobilize agents and institutions toward the struggles that unfold, including confrontations that gain momentum across various social fields, particularly the field of power. Thus, the definition of higher education policy, marked by disputes and contradictions, is a historical and relational construct that arises from the negotiation of preferences and worldviews among different social agents. The text further points out that the concept of "field" helps identify the ideological assumptions, contradictions, confrontations, strategies, and interests implicit in discourses and actions that aid in understanding higher education policy as an object of study.